A lion tamer at a Moscow circus had to have 100 stitches after he was clawed and bitten by one of his charges during Saturday evening’s performance, Russian media said.
The tamer at the Nikulin Circus, Artur Bagdasarov, sustained injuries to his head and one of his hands when he intervened to stop a fight between two of the 10 tigers on stage, said the circus’ director, Maxim Nikulin.
“The trainer — he’s the head of the pack. If he hadn’t intervened, in five seconds they would have all been fighting and it would have been unstoppable,” Nikulin told RIA-Novosti.
The tamer was rescued when his father Mikhail fired into the air from a starting pistol and, with Artur’s sister Karina, drove the tigers into their cage.
Asked how seriously Bagdasarov was injured, Nikulin responded: “From the point of view of a normal person, very seriously. From the point of view of a circus artist, not at all seriously. These are circus artists, people in a dangerous profession, who can do things others can’t”.
Bagdasarov will probably take less than a week to recover, Nikulin said.
“The main thing is that the spine is in one piece as when tigers attack they first break the neck, whether it’s a deer or a human,” Nikulin said.
The Nikulin Circus building dates from 1880 and is one of a number of permanent circuses in the region that date from the late 19th century and continue to host travelling performers, many of them from old circus families.
There were no plans to destroy Bagdasarov’s attacker, the sister told RIA-Novosti. “If we shot every tiger that attacked us we wouldn’t have any left,” she said. — AFP